Take scientific judgements—the embodiment of a discourse which is supposedly factual and objective. Imagine two scientists are proposing competing theories about the motion of the moon. One scientist argues that the moon orbits the earth at such and such a speed due to the effects of gravity and other Newtonian forces. The other, agreeing to the exact same observations, argues that behind Newtonian forces there are actually undetectable space-aliens who are using sophisticated tractor beams to move every object in the universe. No amount of observation will resolve this conflict. They agree on every observation and measurement. One just has a more baroque theory than the other. Reasonably, most of us think the simpler theory is better.

But when we ask why this theory is better, we find ourselves resorting to things that are patently non-factual. We may argue that theories which postulate useless entities are worse than simpler ones—citing the value of simplicity. We may argue that the space-alien theory contradicts too many other judgements—citing the value of coherence. We can give a whole slew of reasons why one theory is better than another, but there is no rulebook out there for scientists to point to which resolves the matter objectively. Even appeals to the great pragmatic value of the first theory or arguments that point out the lack of explanatory and predictive power of the space-alien theory, are still appeals to a value. No amount of observation will tell you why being pragmatic makes one theory better—it is something for which you have to argue. No matter what kind of fact we are trying to establish, it is going to be inextricably tied to the values we hold.

What I think the quoted argument misses is that the mathematical equation describing the dynamics is valid regardless of the fundamental reason for why the dynamics happens that way. Newton's law of gravitation, for example, is clearly a supreme approximation describing the motion of the moon. Whether that is because of general relativity or because of space aliens, it is nevertheless true.

hmm... I like the quote: “He’s a quantum philosopher. I can’t understand him and his position at the same time.” I'm definitely going to have to look more into this guy, as there are very few recent philosophers I can stomach reading for long...

John Adams wrote:I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress! And by God I have had this Congress!

fadedpsychosis wrote:hmm... I like the quote: “He’s a quantum philosopher. I can’t understand him and his position at the same time.” I'm definitely going to have to look more into this guy, as there are very few recent philosophers I can stomach reading for long...

That made me giggle.

Renewed yet infused with apathy.Let's just have a good time, all right?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjQii_BboIk

Metsfanmax wrote:What I think the quoted argument misses is that the mathematical equation describing the dynamics is valid regardless of the fundamental reason for why the dynamics happens that way. Newton's law of gravitation, for example, is clearly a supreme approximation describing the motion of the moon. Whether that is because of general relativity or because of space aliens, it is nevertheless true.

Hrmm, my limited knowledge of philosophy makes me agree with what you are saying; but, and im sure there is someone around here who can answer adequately, are you not referring to empiricism rather than objectivity?

thus an adherence to the standard of falsifiability* resolves those problems within the realm of the physical/natural sciences. The space-aliens hypothesis is dealt within other realms, e.g. philosophy (e.g. metaphysics), etc.

Metsfanmax wrote:What I think the quoted argument misses is that the mathematical equation describing the dynamics is valid regardless of the fundamental reason for why the dynamics happens that way. Newton's law of gravitation, for example, is clearly a supreme approximation describing the motion of the moon. Whether that is because of general relativity or because of space aliens, it is nevertheless true.

Hrmm, my limited knowledge of philosophy makes me agree with what you are saying; but, and im sure there is someone around here who can answer adequately, are you not referring to empiricism rather than objectivity?

I don't know if I'm quite qualified to answer this, but I had made a mental note to come back and try at some point (as much for my own clarity of reasoning as for any external reasoning), so here goes.

Empiricism is all about judging reality only on the basis of evidence that we can collect, either directly or indirectly. Objectivity is all about finding out what is really there, behind the "veil of perception". For example it would be perfectly permissible in empiricism for me to say "I am sitting on a black chair", but for objectivity that statement is functionally meaningless. The concepts of me, the chair, the colour black, and what it means to be sitting are all inherently subjective, even if they can be almost universally agreed upon. What actually matters is what is really happening.

In a sense, to avoid making this a really really long post (it's going to be long enough anyway), we are limited by our perception. We can draw up mathematical models for things, we can "discover" certain laws and functional relationships between things, but what we cannot do (with the possible exception of pure theoretical mathematics, and even that is debatable) is to see behind our "veil of perception". Our brains just aren't capable of perceiving or conceptualising that level of reality.

For example, you can look at relativity. Relativity states that space is curved, but it is impossible to conceive of a 3 dimensional object, functionally infinite in all of those 3 dimensions, that is also curved. We can imagine something like a long, thin, wide box, that has 3 dimensions, and then bend it to be a curved 3 dimensonal object, but we cannot imagine that the 3 dimensions themselves can be curved because we would have to be able to conceptualise a space outside of those 3 dimensions for it to be curved in, and thats simply limiting the size of the 3 dimensions and curving within those same 3 dimensions, which is fundamentally different to an actual reality of 3 dimensional space which is also curved.

Or, you can look at quantum mechanics. This states that an electron may be able to exist in multiple places at the same time. Now, we can imagine a picture of an electron at a point in space, and we can imagine zooming out to give a wider view and we can say that now we can see that electron existing in more than one place at once, but what we are actually doing is imagining multiple elctrons. We're not picturing a single electron co-existing in multiple locations, we are imagining copies of the elctron existing at the same time in different locations and all sharing the same behaviour and exhibiting the effect that if one of them is affected by something they all are.

It all gets very counter-intuitive at these sorts of levels, and it's confounded some of the greatest minds of our generation and a few beforehand. Richard Feynman, the godfather of quantum physics, himself admitted that he didn't actually understand quantum physics. He just followed the maths.

Metsfanmax wrote:What I think the quoted argument misses is that the mathematical equation describing the dynamics is valid regardless of the fundamental reason for why the dynamics happens that way. Newton's law of gravitation, for example, is clearly a supreme approximation describing the motion of the moon. Whether that is because of general relativity or because of space aliens, it is nevertheless true.

Hrmm, my limited knowledge of philosophy makes me agree with what you are saying; but, and im sure there is someone around here who can answer adequately, are you not referring to empiricism rather than objectivity?

I don't know if I'm quite qualified to answer this, but I had made a mental note to come back and try at some point (as much for my own clarity of reasoning as for any external reasoning), so here goes.

Empiricism is all about judging reality only on the basis of evidence that we can collect, either directly or indirectly. Objectivity is all about finding out what is really there, behind the "veil of perception". For example it would be perfectly permissible in empiricism for me to say "I am sitting on a black chair", but for objectivity that statement is functionally meaningless. The concepts of me, the chair, the colour black, and what it means to be sitting are all inherently subjective, even if they can be almost universally agreed upon. What actually matters is what is really happening.

In a sense, to avoid making this a really really long post (it's going to be long enough anyway), we are limited by our perception. We can draw up mathematical models for things, we can "discover" certain laws and functional relationships between things, but what we cannot do (with the possible exception of pure theoretical mathematics, and even that is debatable) is to see behind our "veil of perception". Our brains just aren't capable of perceiving or conceptualising that level of reality.

I disagree with what you've concluded. While you've given a good description of the difference between empiricism and true understanding of reality, it does not logically follow that empiricism cannot teach us about the fundamentals of nature. It is quite possible that, with our limited brains, we cannot even in principle understand fundamental reality; but there's no good reason to assume this a priori. While some statements are inherently subjective (e.g the grass is green), some statements can be inherently objective (e.g. that grass is reflecting much light around a wavelength of 500 nanometers). The fact that the objective statement might not represent true reality does not make it any less objective in nature. A statement's objectivity does not mean that everyone will agree with its truth value; it just means that the claim can be independently evaluated by all rational observers.

I think there is a difference in the definitions of objectivity between philosophy and science, and that's what I was trying to get at more than anything else.

In philosophy it is very hard, maybe impossible, to get down to true objective reality. Philosophical objectivity however is a very different thing to scientific objectivity (just the same as both are different to political objectivity for example).

It's a bit like saying that Newtonian mechanics is false. Yes, it is false, but for a given spectrum of circumstances (as in stay away from quantum or relativistic scales) it is effectively identical to the truth. By scientific objectivity, and within these limits, it is a truth, by philosophical objectivity, it is false.

The judgement we then make is under which version of objectivity we are working to answer any given question.

crispybits wrote:I think there is a difference in the definitions of objectivity between philosophy and science, and that's what I was trying to get at more than anything else.

In philosophy it is very hard, maybe impossible, to get down to true objective reality. Philosophical objectivity however is a very different thing to scientific objectivity (just the same as both are different to political objectivity for example).

It's a bit like saying that Newtonian mechanics is false. Yes, it is false, but for a given spectrum of circumstances (as in stay away from quantum or relativistic scales) it is effectively identical to the truth. By scientific objectivity, and within these limits, it is a truth, by philosophical objectivity, it is false.

The judgement we then make is under which version of objectivity we are working to answer any given question.

The point I was making is that nothing in principle precludes a scientifically objective statement from being philosophically objective as well. And yes, I would agree that in philosophy it is impossible to approach objective reality. Fairly hard to understand reality when you don't leave the armchair in your ivory tower!

And that point is perfectly valid, but without any standards by which to judge philosophically objective reality after the veil of perception is removed, then we can probably never know which objective scientific truths do actually coincide with objective philosophical truths, because philosophically we must doubt everything (*wheels out the brain in a jar/matrix thing*). Empiricism is basically just an extension of pragmatism, it assumes that we actually do exist in reality, but it makes no effort to actually prove that assumption.

crispybits wrote:And that point is perfectly valid, but without any standards by which to judge philosophically objective reality after the veil of perception is removed, then we can probably never know which objective scientific truths do actually coincide with objective philosophical truths, because philosophically we must doubt everything (*wheels out the brain in a jar/matrix thing*). Empiricism is basically just an extension of pragmatism, it assumes that we actually do exist in reality, but it makes no effort to actually prove that assumption.

Which thinkers have provided the best arguments for steps toward that proof?

crispybits wrote:And that point is perfectly valid, but without any standards by which to judge philosophically objective reality after the veil of perception is removed, then we can probably never know which objective scientific truths do actually coincide with objective philosophical truths, because philosophically we must doubt everything (*wheels out the brain in a jar/matrix thing*). Empiricism is basically just an extension of pragmatism, it assumes that we actually do exist in reality, but it makes no effort to actually prove that assumption.

What does it even mean to exist in reality? If your point is that we may actually just be a computer simulation, that's fine. Scientifically objective statements just seek to determine the rules of the computer program. Within the confines of whatever our existence is, we can certainly hope to make objective statements, even if we have no test by which one could verify the objectivity in a philosophically defensible sense.

BigBallinStalin wrote:Which thinkers have provided the best arguments for steps toward that proof?

I don't know - I don't tend to pay attention to who writes a priori philosophical arguments because credibility is self-contained in those arguments. My a priori arguments stand or fall on their reason, logic and consistency, just the same as Descartes' or Putnam's or Joe Bloggs'. Credibility of source is relatively unimportant when dealing with debates of this kind in my opinion, it's all about the argument itself.

If you want to recommend any of your personal favourites then I'll certainly look into them if and when I have time and motive to do so.

Metsfanmax wrote:What does it even mean to exist in reality? If your point is that we may actually just be a computer simulation, that's fine. Scientifically objective statements just seek to determine the rules of the computer program. Within the confines of whatever our existence is, we can certainly hope to make objective statements, even if we have no test by which one could verify the objectivity in a philosophically defensible sense.

Because if the philosophically objective reality is that we are in a computer program, or we're brains in jars, or we're actually in a reality we perceive and comprehend, then that is the philosophically objective reality. Whether the scientifically objective reality is us describing actual reality or the coding of a computer program or whatever has no bearing on the philosophically objective reality. That remains whatever it actually is regardless of our perception. This is why I say it's very probably impossible for us to determine what the philosophically objective reality is.

This is why I define the difference between philosophical objectivity and scientific objectivity. We can have scientific objectivity without having any clue about philosophical objectivity, because of the assumptions that science makes. We exist. We can perceive reality. We can learn about reality. Reality is consistent and persistent. The fundamental nature of reality necessary to make those assumptions, the philosophical objectivity, is not something science does or possibly ever can touch on. It's a philosophical matter not a scientific one. It's also fairly irrelevant in as much that it has never been proven to have a practical, functional bearing on the reality we perceive outside of what can be determined by pragmatism and scientific enquiry.

Metsfanmax wrote:What does it even mean to exist in reality? If your point is that we may actually just be a computer simulation, that's fine. Scientifically objective statements just seek to determine the rules of the computer program. Within the confines of whatever our existence is, we can certainly hope to make objective statements, even if we have no test by which one could verify the objectivity in a philosophically defensible sense.

Because if the philosophically objective reality is that we are in a computer program, or we're brains in jars, or we're actually in a reality we perceive and comprehend, then that is the philosophically objective reality. Whether the scientifically objective reality is us describing actual reality or the coding of a computer program or whatever has no bearing on the philosophically objective reality. That remains whatever it actually is regardless of our perception. This is why I say it's very probably impossible for us to determine what the philosophically objective reality is.

You've failed to define "actual" reality, which makes this argument incomprehensible to me. How is "actual" reality any different from philosophically objective reality? In other words, if philosophically objective reality is that we're in a computer program, and science allows us to determine the rules of the computer program, what's the issue? Hasn't scientific objectivity then meshed with your "philosophically objective" reality?

Actual reality = Philosophically objective reality (as in reality as it is without any preconceptions or assumptions from us about what actually is, such as "I exist" or "I perceive reality")

The point I'm making is that actual reality could be a computer program, a magical illusion, or a multidimensional existent universe of the kind we perceive around us. But the question itself is irrelevant, and linking our understanding of scientific reality to any of those is redundant because of the assumptions science already has to make to function, and because of the lack of any proven mechanism whereby it's ever functionally different whatever version you prefer to believe.